Silk
by lye tea
Summary: Azula hangs on by a thread. /Azula/


**Silk**

Her friends went to see a matchmaker, she went home to play with a matchbook. When she took it out, laid it on the bed with its insides sprawled open, Azula took a match and begged it to be flared.

_Begged_ for it to come to life and envelope the room (the world and herself) with horrors too horrible to say. Those that she loved and wanted most.

"Please, please, _please_."

And that was when she summoned a fire-god, devoured him, and appointed herself as one.

And that was when she realized: she was (could) unstoppable.

-

"It's not my fault, mommy. It was the matches. The flints. They told me to do it. Honest. I'm innocent, mommy. Mommy, mommy."

Ursa looked at her daughter with bizarre-red eyes and tried to cuddle her tiny form.

-

And while her brother fed the turtleducks, she fed the Fire Lord.

She was his "little advisor"—he called her (and really, she _did_ advise). When a meeting was held, she was allowed (and no one else) to sit by him (on his lap) and rant off steam and commands.

Azula was always obeyed.

They were scared, his generals. They were powerful and mighty and could kill her (or thought they could) in a second. But they shivered when she entered the room.

_It's her eyes_.

"They follow me everywhere. Two little rubies that light in the night," this one said to another.

_I heard that_.

Azula would rotate her head backwards and glare ferociously. And sometimes, when she did that, the men lit themselves on fire. So, the War Room became an inferno and no one ever disagreed anymore.

(Ozai looked on gladly, _rapaciously_, and praised his miniature doll with hisses and prisoners--"to practice on, Azula.")

-

What no one thought of (as otherwise or something that just will never arise) was that Azula wasn't lonely. Wasn't heartless. Wasn't pining away for a friend.

She had a friend. _A best friend_.

A _cosmic_ connection, they shared.

And this friend—whom she really loved—stared back at her with loving eyes. This was a friend who never strayed away, who always stayed two feet behind her. Dark and ominous, it trailed after her, slithering across the ground.

"Come on, quick. _Immediately_. I'm your _Princess_." _I'm your Fire Lord_.

And the silhouette-like tassels of silk and sickle pursued dutifully.

_Follow The Leader_: Azula had an engorged head, brimmed to bursting with grandiose designs she just couldn't let slip through.

-

"I love you."

—I love you too. Love you _best_.

-

"I want Mom back!" Zuko cried, sniffling and tearing his eyes out.

She laughed, _have no mercy_.

"Mom? Mom is d-e-a-d, Zu-Zu. And don't forget that. She didn't love you or any of us. Yeah, even _you_, her precious baby boy. She didn't take you did she? No, she left you behind. To rot. In this hell-hole. With me and Daddy and everyone that you hate. And Uncle? He's gone too. And he is _never coming back_."

Zuko shoved past her. She slammed into the ground, got up neatly and dusted off the gravel. And shouted after him: Run, Zu-Zu! Wait till I catch you, then you'll be d-e-a-d too!

She laughed (this time harsher), _have no pity_.

-

Lo and Li told her how special she was. They were like all the other obsequious idiots (though they were _slightly_ better). They told her that she had a gift, that a gift like hers only came once every hundred years. Maybe even a thousand.

And that the last person who had a gift—a _semblance—_like hers was Avatar Rokku.

_Must run in the family_, that they didn't ever say (aloud).

Azula smiled at them, confident and pleased that she could take on the world. Just her and her lover, friend, and so on.

Everything.

She (and _her_) had sacrificed everything. And so, it was very surprising that it still felt like nothing.

-

The heat is concentrated and massive. It winds its ribbons up around a spool and then—_swift_—it sings when it hits the water. Azula sees herself doused in the water.

_Bitch_.

Katara.

_Ugly, worthless, bitch_.

And then the palace shifts and the clouds disperse. And her eyes roll back (white and milky). And Azula loses control.

"She's slipping," Zuko whispered.

Azula cackles and rides on raw power towards them, hands at her side, slinging broken dregs of the universe at their bodies.

_Me, Myself, My, Mine. Me-Me-Me-_Me.

Azula screams.

-

"Traitors," she snaps, "All of them. _I_ am Fire Lord."

(The guards outside her cell give each other anxious looks and tighten their grips on the swinging swords.)

-

And one day: she vanishes all together. And no one can say where she went (or how she did it).

But all that's left behind, folded meticulously on the straw-bed, is a frayed piece of silk.


End file.
